Sonos pushes back Google Assistant support to next year

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The Sonos One and Sonos Beam launched with Alexa, but one of their biggest features was support for Google Assistant down the road. Assistant was originally supposed to launch in early 2018, but considering radio stations are already prepping their Christmas playlists, it looks like that’s not going to happen.

In a blog post today, Sonos confirmed it had pushed back the launch of Google Assistant:

While we originally planned to have the experience ready to ship in 2018, the reality is that we need a bit more time to get the experience right and will now look to lock down a date in 2019, and we’re continuing to make good progress.

That’s going to be disappointing to anyone holding out Sonos gear until Assistant arrives, or anyone who’s been eagerly waiting since last year. The company doesn’t provide any further explanation as to why it’s taking them so long to get it right when several competitors have been able to incorporate Assistant over the past year. But I think it’s better the company get it right than show up with a half-baked implementation.

That said, if you really, really want Google Assistant, you can sign up to be considered for the private beta, which is launching after screening applicants over the next few weeks. You’ll have to work for the privilege too: Sonos is asking testers to commit to 14 hours of listening per week, to use ten voice commands daily, and to respond to surveys within 72 hours.

The company acknowledges Google Assistant support is the most common question it gets and plans to share another update in “early 2019.”